'Trail North' Fascinating Study of Family's Move From Mexico
June 28, 1983
by Elizabeth Staley
The conventional view of Mexican immigrants is of hordes of unhappy
people pouring through chinks in the U.S. border to find a better life in the United
States. While few argue with that, there is another side.
"The Trail North" (tonight at 10 on KNME, Channel 5) examines
Mexican immigration by tracing a family's generations-long relocation from Baja California
to San Diego and, in some cases, family members' return to their homeland.
The engrossing half-hour produced for San Diego PBS station KPBS by
Albuquerque native Paul Espinosa, focuses on Sacramento State University anthropologist
Robert Alvarez who used his own family for a framework in studying Mexican migration.
Espinosa told the Journal that he came up with the idea for "The
Trail North" while he and Espinosa were at Stanford University. Espinosa chose to
document Alvarez' doctoral dissertation because "his family's experiences were not
dissimilar to those of other migrant families."
Alvarez and his 10-year-old son, Luis, trace their family's origins
from the tiny Mexican town of Las Parras where Thomas Smith, a Yankee sailor who was the
first American to settle in Baja California after jumping ship in 1808, married Maria Mesa
and began the family legacy that came to include the Marquez and Alvarez clans of Southern
California.
"It's a 'Roots' type of program where the issue is made very
personal," Espinosa said. "We wanted to try to diffuse the immigration
controversy; it's a tremendously emotional issue that's been highly politicized."
Espinosa, who is the director of Hispanic affairs at KPBS, said
tonight's program is intended to be the first episode of a four-part mini-series. He and
Alvarez have applied for funding to continue the series through the National Endowment for
the Humanities. The half-hour format, which isn't long enough for just one program,
"was intentional," Espinosa said. "(KPBS) had done quite a few half-hour
documentaries successfully and in the beginning we felt the story could be done in a
half-hour. Then we realized that there was way too much story and decided to make it a
pilot."
Espinosa says that having actor Martin Sheen narrate the program
"was a windfall for us that certainly has added to the promotability of the
film." He said Sheen, a Spaniard whose real name is Ramon Estavez, "was very
open to the idea when we approached him. He asked to see the script right away."